1) All languages have specific design criteria, a goal in mind. . 

2) Give two languages that are in direct conflict with each other. Provide examples of these conflicts as either programming examples (features allowed or not allowed) or program model, (environment). Compare and contrast the terms readability and writeability regarding your selected two languages. 

3) All languages evolve; describe some of the features that you believe are appropriate for changes in programming languages. Describe, in your opinion, the goal of program language evolution should be. 

4) What is a predicate transformer function? 

5) Which semantics approach is most widely used and why?, Which is the most accurate?, and which semantics approach provides the most benefit to the language developer (first define what the benefit is, and then describe why you think this is a benefit) 

6) Describe the different types of Semantics (chapter 4), when and how are they applied, what are the advantages or disadvantages to each type. 

7) Explain why compilers use parsing algorithms that work on only on a subset of all grammars. 

8) Make an argument, which type of parser is more powerful, bottom-up or top down, use as may examples as possible to support your side, but only support one side. 

9) What is a variable, what is the relationship between a variable and attributes and why don't most functional languages have them (variables). 

10) What are implicit heap-dynamic variables, when, how and why are they used, when should they not be used. 

11) Why is the heap slower than the stack, what techniques are used to maintain heap storage (skipping garbage collection and de-allocation) 

12) What is dynamic scoping, when and where it is applied, what are the performance impacts of using dynamic scoping and how can these be minimized. 

13) What are the advantages and disadvantages of user-defined ordinal types as data types? What are the advantages and disadvantages to an associative array? 

14) Make an argument that narrowing or widening conversions are never safe or are safe, support your claim with examples. 

15) Define elaboration, give an example showing declaration and binding and exactly when elaboration takes place, use any language you prefer 

16) Give a real world example and usage of a Union, Tuple, associative array, (chose a language of your choice) and why you would use each. 

17) Give an example of a strongly typed language 

18) What is the difference between casting and coercions (is there a difference?, if so what is it)